1.1 Why Do We Discuss This?

• Psychology, and other sciences, have an unfortunately tragic history - filled with unethical behavior that has harmed both willing and un-willing participants. We cannot ignore this history, as it informs us as to why this subject in relevant at all.
  • E.g., Eugenics movement, forced sterilization, continuation of various segregation practices, etc.
• However, just because we discuss historical examples, does not mean that modern studies are not also threatened by ethical violations. All modern research must be reviewed by multiple parties tasked with respecting participants and ethics in any given study.
  • Most studies cannot even be legally conducted before there has been a thorough review of the planned procedures.
• In our proposed research design and procedures, we can never neglect ethical principles. No research findings are worth completely abandoning cautious and respectful behavior of those who participate in our studies.

2.1 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

• In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) and Tuskegee Institute engaged in a study which, at the time, was meant to bolster public health knowledge surrounding syphilis in Black men. Instead, its historical significance is that of being the catalyst for a massive research ethics overhaul in the United States, due to its numerous negligent procedures.

• The study proceeded in intentional secrecy, deceiving both its participants, and the broader American public. The researchers ignored well-founded concerns from whistleblowers and failed to respect the autonomy and well-being of its participants.

• Lessons learned:
  • Participants were not treated with respect, autonomy, and dignity. They were deceived, intentionally un-informed of risks and treatments, prevented from finding information that would aid them in making decision about study participation
  • Participants were intimately and immensely harmed. They were allowed to suffer with the effects of the disease, despite the development of valid treatments that would have cured the disease. The study prioritized the possible results over the safety of its participants.
  • Participants were purposefully sampled as members of a vulnerable and oppressed socioeconomic group. The Black men in this study were likely to be poor and have little formal education. Rather than take measures to respect and inform each participant, this was exploited to keep participants unaware.

2.2 Milgram’s Obedience Studies

• In summary, Stanley Milgram’s experiments (which came in many variations) were focused on examining how people respond to authoritative commands to inflict punishment and follow orders. These experiments were, in part, born out of questions surrounding obedience of citizens and soldiers in the Nazi regime, in Germany.

• In this case, the flaw does not lie in harm done to the actor - the shocks weren’t real, and were merely simulated. However, think about the emotional distress in the participants - feeling “forced” by authority to perform inhumane actions.

• Though participants were debriefed at the end of the study and met the actor who assured they were fine - there are questions as to whether they were truly told that those shocks were faked. Some participants worried for weeks.

• Lessons learned:
  • Milgram continued the studies, even after learning a staggering 65% of participants would continue the shocks to the end - usually accompanied by extreme emotional distress of the participants.
  • While the Tuskegee study showed us physical harm to the participants, this study showed us emotional pain inflicted on the participants. Both are reasonable dangers we must consider in psychological research.
  • Was it worth it? Did we learn something so valuable that made it worth the pain those people felt…

2.3 Other Studies?

• There are no shortage of older psychological studies that follow procedures that would never be authorized today
  • e.g., Zimbardo’s prison experiment

• Just because historical studies tend to have more readily identifiable examples of ethics violations, doesn’t mean modern studies are innocent of similar errors.
  • A recent example from biology research. Remember no study is perfect, but an ethics violation is perhaps the greatest of all sins - because it disrespects the very people kind enough to put their trust in us, in the first place.
• An unknown number of unethical experiments have also occurred under the direction of authoritarian regimes (see Unit 731)

3.1 Overview

• We may look to multiple sources to guide our approach to creating ethical research. While no one source is the definitive guide, we make use these to craft a philosophy at the core of our research ethics and treatment of participants.

• Much of these guidelines were created in response to Tuskegee study and other failures in ethical research.

3.2 The Belmont Report

Overview

• In many ways, the Belmont Report is the original and most influential guiding pieces of ethical conduct for any type of human subjects research in the United States.

• Though it is very comprehensive and foundational, it can be summarized by focusing on 3 core principles: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. In your future work in the research proposal and article critique, I want you to be very cognizant of these virtues in your writing and reading.

Respect for Persons

• Consists of two applications: Autonomy and respect for limited autonomy

• All people are autonomous. In practice, this means that we allow each person to guide their own participation or non-participation in a study. They are entitled to sufficient knowledge to weigh benefits and risks. A person cannot be coerced, deceived, or offered excessive incentive to obtain consent.

• Some people are limited in autonomy due to outside factors. There are special groups which are, in one way or another, limited in their ability to give informed consent.

  • Examples: those with intellectual/developmental disability, minors, prisoners, those under a medical guardianship or power-of-attorney.
  • In these cases, researchers must act with additional precautions to protect vulnerable individuals.
  • Procedures may involve obtain consent of a guardian and assent of the person under the guardianship.

Beneficence

• This principle is critically concerned with minimization of harm and acting in the best interests of participants and the broader population represented by the sample of the study.

• Now, studies may, by virtue of the research questions, require some degree of harm. However, it is absolutely necessary that researchers do their best to anticipate, avoid, and negate harm wherever it may occur.

  • This often requires that researchers regularly assess the state of participants and ensure they are not unduly harmed by study procedures. Studies may need to be changed (with approval) or outright stopped if risk of harm grows greater than expected.

• Within this principle, is the necessity of ensuring privacy through completely anonymous studies and/or confidential studies. Harm can come to individuals in information is leaked or shared. Institutions will have strict data policies to protect the information gathered about participants in studies.

Justice

• This principle highlights the importance of considering the larger impact of the study and the potential negative effect on the study participants to achieve such a result.

• We should avoid using a sample that is convenient or useful by virtue of their position (e.g., those considered “vulnerable” as stated before) to benefit the broader population.

• Put another way, we should be concerned with ensuring that there is equity between the groups under study, and the larger group that benefits from said work.

3.3 The APA Ethical Principles

Overview

• The APA guidelines supplement and apply the Belmont report principles specifically to psychological science and practice. In some ways, it expands and adds further detail to ” update ” the principals.

• 5 core principals

  • Beneficence and nonmaleficence
  • Fidelity and responsibility
  • Integrity
  • Justice
  • Respect for people’s rights and dignity

• These guidelines provide further definition and explanations on a variety of topics, named the Ethical Standards for Research:

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

• The IRB is the central governing body overseeing ethics in research at any given institution. They are responsible for carefully inspecting and evaluating the planned methods of any given study, but especially human subjects studies.
  • The IRB often requests extensive documentation on planned studies and procedures well in advance of when they happen. It is not uncommon to have a nearly completed methods section and introduction sections before a study is even approved
  • E.g., Neuropsychological Study at Trinity
• They are a key step in approving research, prior to conducting a study. Without IRB approval, a study cannot proceed.

Informed Consent

• Under many studies, a researcher must provide each participant a form that indicates the general goals of the study, likely benefits and risks, as well all procedures for a person to revoke participation.

• Regulation do allow for informed consent to be waived under circumstances, such as when data was already gathered (e.g., census data, electronic health record data from routine care) or when a person could “reasonably expect” to be seen by the general public. However, this waiver must be explicitly asked for and explained.

• IRBs carefully weigh whether a study must employ informed consent forms based on the risk to individuals and data anonymity.

  • As with any component of a study, and IRB can request changes or outright force a certain course of actions

Deception

• Intentional deception and vagueness as part of a study’s methodology are fairly common and can be done ethically, with caveats.

  • Examples: Milgram’s shocks, confederates (actors), etc.
  • Lie by leaving information out is called omission whereintentionally giving false information is called commission. Deception should only be used to the point that it is absolutely necessary to the goals of the study.

• First, the deception must be rationalized as necessary to the goals and validity of the study. It must be done intentionally to protect specific goals and threats to the study.

  • For example, a participant who knows a study is about implicit bias towards and out-group may act unlike their normal self in order to appear “better”

• Second, this deception must be thoroughly planned and explained to the IRB, with appropriate debrief planned for after completion of the study.

• Deception isn’t a universally loved practice, but many recognize it as a necessary part of studies to isolate psychological effects from bias in participants.

Debriefing

• Debriefing sessions occur with participant after their participation in the study, in which the methods used are explained, and any deception is revealed.

• Researchers may share results with people, so they are aware of findings, and can possibly benefit from the research. Functionally, we debrief for the same reason we share full procedures in published work: to increase trust in the process and science.

Research Misconduct

• This term is mostly related to the deadly practices of Data fabrication and/or falsification.

• Fabrication: When data is created to support certain conclusions

• Falsification: When data is selectively pruned, filtered, or treated to bias it towards favorable conclusions. This is also relevant when procedures are use that bias participants in their reactions.

• Both of these acts of research misconduct may have wide and longstanding effects on professional careers of researchers, as well as public effects

Openness and Transparency

• As a general rule, one should readily share the procedures, analyses, and data used to complete research (see Merton’s openness norm) - unless to share these would jeopardize the security and privacy of subjects.
  • Not all data sharing is allowed by certain organizations - sometimes this decision is somewhat out of the researcher’s hands
• Pre-registered hypotheses, data sharing agreements, and code-sharing can all be helpful practices to allow research practices to be better inspected by interested parties. It can also be useful in catching small errors, leading to corrections or retractions when necessary.

Plagiarism

• Plagiarism is said to be passing another person’s work or words off as your own. It is especially easy to do in research writing, when we rapidly state claims and evidence from prior literature.

• Plagiarism can be both un-intentional/accidental or fully intentional - however, the implications of both types are largely the same, and the consequences tend to be equally severe.

• It is also possible to self-plagiarize. This may seem paradoxical, but the reuse of the same sentences as part of a new work implies that the sentence originated in the new work, when it did not. When submitting graded or publishable work, it is expected that the piece is novel and unique to other work.

• The two strategies for avoiding plagiarism are to use good paraphrasing and proper APA 7th citations and references. We covered this earlier in our workshop introducing APA style.

Animal Research

This will be less of a focus for this class, but you will need to have some general notions of the nuance in this area. Generally, animals should be used sparingly, and should be treated with the utmost respect for their contributions to studies.

• Lab animals (those kept explicitly for research purposes) have specific ethic guidelines governing their care, habitat, and treatment.

• Lab animals are governed by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), a sort of IRB-for-animals

• 3 Rs

  • Replacements: try to find alternatives to using animals, wherever possible
  • Refinement: minimize harm to animals with better, less intrusive lab procedures
  • Reduction: Try to use as few animals as possible

• Public opinion on animals can be very mixed, and certain advocacy groups seek to outright ban the use of animals in lab studies. However, many also recognize that use of animals is tightly governed (just like with humans) and critical to some areas of research especially dangerous for humans (like early stage clinical trials).

3.4 Making Decisions Ethically

• Just like with the 4 validities we discussed, there is no one, clear way to balance all the ethical considerations a researcher must make.

• The Belmont Report and APA Ethical Code are good starting points, and universities should have Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) office, as well as IRB(s). Most organizations require the completion of ethics certifications programs through the CITI program, prior to being part of formal research teams.

• Ethical decision-making will combine with what we’ve learned about crafting and evaluating claims so that we can reasonably balance the many components of a good research project. Your research proposal and will need to address ethical concerns around research, in addition to the already established validities and claim types.

Week 4 Lecture - Research Ethics || Undergraduate Research Methods in Psychology